I had the great pleasure of meeting Bill Conway several times; he was always charming and avuncular. He was tall, distinguished and had great presence. He was a proponent of zoos as centers of conservation and through the Wildlife Conservation Society ensured that zoos contributed to conservation work in the field. He was a friend and colleague of George Schaller, the greatest large mammal field biologist, and encouraged and supported the wonderful work that he did. Bill recognised the great value of captive breeding of endangered species for conservation and encouraged the zoo community to work more with the breeding of these species, rather than just exhibiting them.
As a zoo Director he was a major driver for developing accredited zoos and establishing standards of welfare, care and housing. He believed that animals needed to be exhibited correctly in appropriate habitats and in correct social groups and pioneered this approach at the Bronx Zoo.
He was a friend of Gerald Durrell and I first met Bill when he visited Jersey Zoo in 1980 for a meeting of the Captive Breeding Specialist Group that was being hosted there. Bill particularly liked that way that Durrell were integrating the captive work with that in the field, a model he felt all zoos should be emulating. Gerald and Lee Durrell held a party for the delegates in their flat at the zoo. I was still in my twenties and was quite overwhelmed, it was a great baronial banquet, with fine wines and cheeses, tropical fruits, caviar and artichokes. The great and the good of zoo conservation were there, I cannot now remember them all but do recall Bill Conway, Uli Seal and Jean Delacour.
I last met Bill Conway in 2018, and over a meal we chatted about zoos, conservation and the direction they are moving, and he fully embraced the ideas that we should be applying zoo and captive management techniques to the conservation of wild and free-living populations. He was of the opinion that zoos still had a huge amount more to offer and had to think more broadly about how they could help conservation.
He was a man who pioneered the development of modern zoos, urged greater involvement with wild populations and through his work at the Bronx Zoo showed how they could embrace conservation.
